/Starling-Extension-Graphics

flash.display.Graphics style extension for the Starling Flash GPU rendering framework

Primary LanguageActionScript

Starling-Extension-Graphics

This extension adds Jon Pace's 'Fill' and 'Stroke' display objects, with support for adding arbitrary vertices that are then triangulated for rendering on the GPU.

The aim is to reproduce Flash's graphics API as closely as possible via simplified lineTo, moveTo etc calls within Shape.graphics and Sprite.graphics. Once the basics have been reproduced, the API can be augmented with more powerful features.

An ear-clipping algorithm is currently used for triangulating the simple polygons generated by the moveTo, lineTo methods. Supports both simple and non-simple (self-intersecting) polygons.

Starling Framework: the GPU powered 2D Flash API

What is Starling?

Starling is an ActionScript 3 library that mimics the conventional Flash display tree architecture. In contrast to conventional display objects, however, Starling "lives" entirely inside the Stage3D environment. That means that all objects are rendered directly by the GPU, which leads to a significant performance boost.

Starling's API is not a direct 1:1 port of the Flash API. The classes were streamlined and optimized for working well with the GPU; common tasks in game development were simplified. Starling hides the Stage3D internals from developers, but makes it easy to access them for those who need to create custom display objects.

Just like its iOS sibling, the Sparrow Framework, Starling aims to be as lightweight and easy to use as possible. As an Open Source project, much care was taken to make the source code easy to read, understand and extend.

Where do I find more information about Starling?

Here are a few starting points: